Naughton Guilty of Kid Porn

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Naughton Guilty of Kid Porn

LOS ANGELES – A jury on Thursday found a former Disney executive guilty of possessing child pornography but was unable to reach verdicts on charges that he crossed state lines for the purpose of having sex with a minor and arranged to have sex with the minor via Internet messages.

Patrick Naughton, 34, pleaded not guilty to all three federal charges, claiming that his "dirty talk" with a girl identifying herself as being 13 years old was just fantasy. The "girl" was in fact an FBI agent.

Naughton headed the Walt Disney Co.'s Go Network Internet service when he was arrested in September. Prosecutors said he chatted on the Internet and sought sex from an FBI agent pretending to be a 13-year-old girl whose online screen name was "KrisLA."

Prosecutors told the Federal court jury that Naughton traveled from his home in Seattle for a business meeting in San Jose, California, and then flew to Los Angeles on 16 September for a meeting at Disney headquarters.

That evening, he went to the Santa Monica Pier for a rendezvous with "Kris" that had been arranged during one of their online chats a few days earlier.

"Kris" turned out to be 28-year-old Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Amber Braaten, dressed to look much younger, who testified that she helped arrest Naughton on the pier after he identified himself and suggested that the two take separate paths to the beach below.